Lynchian Americana, Baroque Italiana

Prada:  Spring-Summer 2012.

Miuccia Prada’s angle has always been quirk - the type of confusing aesthetic that appears playful and approachable but is communicated in some of the most puzzling, often times perverse ways.  Never one for a gimmick though, Miuccia’s humorous take has now for the past few seasons, been focused on refocusing Prada maison iconography - the kind of work that never really changes and consciously anchors itself to a readily identifiable body of work.  But Miuccia will never forgo her need to reflect the world around her as she sees it; a melodic bifurcation on silly and self-contained. We’ve seen it all before - back in 2003 when Grace Jones’ ‘She’s Lost Control’ pounded disquietingly during a collection showcasing russian military outerwear, in 2004 during which the rebellious ‘Rhymin’ and Stealin’’ awkwardly set the stage for the relaxed 1950’s Italian countrywoman, and in 2002 when Hans Platzgumer’s ‘Lazy’ - a ballad of self-professed ennui and angst, pulsated during a collection that transcribed a geeky version of the stereotypically ‘fashion-y’ (is that a word?) subversive-dom archetype.  [This collection appeared at first glance as a higher saturated, sharper articulation of that Fall-Winter 2002 collection.] And now yesterday when booms of industrial aggro-tech perplexed onlookers during a collection that emphasized an even more embellished take on the Italian baroque, married funnily with American sports culture and the eras it normally engages.  If you’re thinking DSquared drive-ins and bar-brawling biker gangs (was that 2004?) - think again.  Miuccia’s collection neither appropriated or referenced the literal past - but reiterated the culture memory of those ideas through the unearthing of their ghosts.  And if you want to cling to an explanation of retrospective, anthropological dressing, you must first understand that Miuccia is not a historian but an individual forging ahead with her own narrative. It seems like I’m trying to squeak out of this one - but Miuccia never folds to a trend, she fastens them herself with a lifetime of acquired wit and charm, channel-mediated by her notoriously haute-sex intellectuality.  

For me, this collection resurfaced a few (now iconographic) images and vocabulary that I normally associate with the house:  Sierra Huisman and Harry Kinkead in 2000 having an argument in a Poliform-esque hotel room, Amber Valletta looking austerely into the abyss cocooned in a snow-encrusted Kubrickian hedge-maze, and a 1950’s beach scene captured for the Spring-Summer 2001 photo series.  Now, if you’re thinking David Lynch, you’re probably on track.  Miuccia’s evocation of suburbia and its fascination with mechanics, car culture, and domesticity of that era (both Italian and American) is on the deus for Spring-Summer 2012.  If they appear like seemingly disassociate concepts, they are.  But the Bond-girl bathing suits, pleated high skirts, and quarter-length baja jackets (the azure one on Mariacarla Boscono....) intacted the kind of expected monkey-wrench quotients of an overall uniformly sportswear-oriented showing.  Natasha Poly closed in a rosette embossed overcoat - the type of print that suspends me into my late maternal grandmother’s kitchen - a small room encased in 1950’s rose-adorned wallpaper.  If Miuccia didn’t achieve the zeitgeist at the moment, let’s face it - nobody will.  That clever cat.  

- Matthew Callahan